Why is different just because somebody else (another team) is doing the power-grabbing and warmongering and denigrating the opposition?
One candidate was singing about bombing Iran, one was saying diplomacy should be brought back, you call them both warmongers?
Yes: Obama is still saber-rattling over Iran. You claim one was "singing about bombing Iran", but I challenge you to actually find either that actually said anything like that. If anything, the rhetoric has stepped up, now claiming "substantiated intelligence" that they have another secret uranium enrichment facility. He's shifted troops from one middle eastern theatre to another, but they're all still there, with no end in sight.
You've got blinders on. Obama was the lesser of two evils: he's not undoing the increments-to-fascism that Bush enacted, but he's not pushing for more.
Actually, he is. Don't you think taking over car companies, greater authority for the Fed, and $3 billion worth of Byrne Grant funding is more increments toward fascism?
Wake up to that already.
I'm well aware of what's going on, because I know both teams are doing all the same stuff. How about you?
There are, however, plenty of Americans of every race that have been awakened to the goings-on in the US government and joining in opposing them [...] But, go ahead and dismiss all this as racist tea-bagging. Now that it's not W running the show, I guess is okay that the wars (and funding for them) are continuing, that the illegal wiretapping is being even more vociferously defended, that federal agents can write their own warrants and continue to do so, and the widening income gap will continue to widen as the rich are bailed out and the middle class is left to pick up the tab.
All of a sudden, they're awakened to those issues! Funny how all those same goings ons were fine by them when there wasn't a black man in the white house.
It is a dam shame that the new boss is the same as the old boss, but it's a really HUGE coincidence that the same policies suddenly frighten some that didn't mind them before, and that the new boss is different in one very visible way. Huge coincidence.
I hear this all the time. Come up with a new one, why don't you?
Frankly, I think the awakening occurred well before the election, at least for a whole lot of people. And there are probably some that are really still pretty clueless, and are cheering on the Tea Parties because they think it will get their team back in power. Whatever - that's a minority.
But let me ask you this. I take it you were railing against everything that Bush did for the last 8 years, and marching in war protests and calling your congressman, etc. What's different now? Why is different just because somebody else (another team) is doing the power-grabbing and warmongering and denigrating the opposition? Is it okay now that the treasury is being raided by corporations and special interests are writing bills now that it's different corporations and special interests than it was before?
my issue with the teabaggers... They had a fair shot at putting their man in power, they lost fair and square.
I think part of the problem is that for most of the dammit - "teabaggers" WTF? Tell you what, instead of "liberal" or "progressive", how about everybody just starts calling you "buttlickers"Tea Party protesters actually didn't have a fair shot at putting "their man" in power. Instead, the Republicans threw up somebody that represented them about as well as John Kerry represented the buttlickers. The Tea Partiers that I have talked with were almost as upset with W as they are now with Obama. And McCain wasn't the change they wanted, either. He was just more centrism that the Republican establishment thought they could win an election with.
The bad part about the Tea Parties is that the Republicans are trying to co-opt the movement. This is how the corrupt politicians keep maintaining power - they pit Team R against Team D, each thinking that if just their team gets in, things will get better, but then they just get worse. If the Tea Parties buy into the Republicans promises now and put them back in power, it will just be more of the same.
Please provide some sort of evidence to back up your wild assertion, a photo of a minority at a teabag party or town-hall rally clearly holding a birther/deather poster would do the trick.
I don't know about the "birther" thing. I think these fringe people are being focused on because it's easy to try to claim they represent a much larger portion of people than they really do, and the entire issue creates a distraction from other real issues that people should be talking about.
There is no such thing as a "teabag party" that I've heard of, although I have heard many of the big-government statists attempting to dismiss and denigrate any opposition to the current and proposed Washington policies by either using sexual innuendo ("tea-bagging") or simply implying (oops - more than just implying it now) they are in opposition because of the President's race. That being the case, it's impossible to provide the evidence you are looking for.
There are, however, plenty of Americans of every race that have been awakened to the goings-on in the US government and joining in opposing them (there are a few examples here ), but of course many blacks are content that there is a nice, friendly black face in the White House that says all the right things, and don't try to look behind the scenes at what is going and and the people that really stand to gain from the massive debt and spending.
But, of course, dismissing any opposition as racist and extremist is convenient since it absolves you of any responsibility for addressing the real issues. One would think that a country $12 trillion in debt, with trillions more in current unfunded liabilities, and a planned annual deficit of another $1 trillion a year over the next 10 years, would be looking at ways to get their financial house in order, rather than looking at new ways of spending money and creating more liabilities that they have no plan for funding.
But, go ahead and dismiss all this as racist tea-bagging. Now that it's not W running the show, I guess is okay that the wars (and funding for them) are continuing, that the illegal wiretapping is being even more vociferously defended, that federal agents can write their own warrants and continue to do so, and the widening income gap will continue to widen as the rich are bailed out and the middle class is left to pick up the tab.
The US is too busy destroying the middle class in their own country to worry about supporting the growth of it in another. All this warmongering is just an excuse to start up more intervention in the Middle East. What's surprising is even/. is joining in with the MSM to try to whip up support for more military action. The irony being that all this is occurring under a president that won a significant number of votes by appealing to people that wanted a less interventionist government.
Could an American please explain to me why the majority of USA seems to oppose public healthcare?
According to economist Paul Krugman in The Conscience of a Liberal, the most likely answer to this question is "because it will help black people". He argues that this was the biggest reason Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson couldn't get health care plans through. And part of the reason why Bill Clinton couldn't, and probably bigger part of the reason Barack Obama's having a tough time.
So, it's racism? That's your answer? Because of racism? Really?
Look, we elected a black President. He's there right now running the office. Can we stop playing the race card now? Shouldn't we talk about real issues and stop accusing the opposition of racism? Or is it just too easy a ploy to give up?
Not really. The federal and state regulations make it difficult to get health insurance for yourself as good and affordable as employers can get it. Large employers even take advantage of those regulations to provide "self-insurance" for their employees, so insurance companies don't get involved in claims decisions - the employer pays the bills.
Yes, you can contract with any other private party for anything. That's the entire basis of common law. And of course everyone wants those contracts to benefit themselves more than the other party. Caveat Emptor.
So with those regulations in place, most folks shop insurance as part of the package when looking for a job. And that's typically the only decision on health care payment / insurance that most folks ever get to make. That really distorts things, as a lot of costs are hidden, controlled, or inflated in one area to take advantage of some tax benefit or other.
Providing less choice in these areas, and basically making a lot of existing plans illegal (or "grandfathered") is not going to improve the situation. There are many ways of addressing the problems that people have, and a public option seems like a reasonable direction, but not when lots of other options are being outlawed at the same time.
Things that aren't even being considered include moving away from employer-based health insurance, implementation of reasonable tort reform, ending in-state restrictions on out-of-state health plans, and ending the ability of providers to drop or raise rates on the insured when they are diagnosed with an expensive condition.
The $18 million contract was for recovery.gov, not usaspending.gov.
Oh, that's right! I get them confused (wonder why).
usaspending.gov is the site run by our old buddy Vivek Kundra. You know, the guy with the impressive resume that, it turns out, includes impressive CIO positions at companies where he was the only employee. Impressive.
Yes. These problems are entirely caused by 8 years of failed policies. You can't really expect to see the positive changes from reversing those failed policies of the Bush administration until at least... January of 2012.
..besides, those were only ordinary whippets. What we're talking about here is in a whole new class, Whippets of Doom!
"Whippets of Doom!" Woohoo that's rich! I gotta use that. Next time somebody asks for a huff of my balloon, I'll just be like "Oh, man, you don't want any of this. These are Whippets of Doom!".
Whatever happened to hooking up your standard Digital cable box to your computer via composite (or even coax) and using an IR Blaster or serial cable to set the channel on the box? Not the perfect solution, but would suffice for most people.
Well, sure, that still works, and probably always will. In fact, I do that in my own setup, although it's more of a hybrid (check out my other post about this) in that I get some channels in HD, but most are in SD out of the cable box's SVideo port.
I think the issue is that most people would prefer HD when it's available, and there are a lot of channels being broadcast in HD these days.
I thought you only needed one m-card (which is apparently the follow on to the cable card but does multiple streams)? I'm new to this, but I thought I could take the m-card out of one of my comcast cable boxes once it was authorized and put it into another device like a TiVo?
Yes, the m-card will handle multiple signals, and there are some TiVO boxes that will accept it. But there are no PC-based solutions that work with it yet. The ATI tuners can use them, but you still need 2 tuners. Supposedly, there will be some multi-tuner cards coming soon.
If you want to look into what's possible, the The Green Button forums has a lot of information, at least about using Windows Media Center. But if you plan to bring HD content into your PC, it's the only option, unless you only want over-the-air channels.
For me, the hybrid was the best choice. I get about 13 channels of HD from the local stations. I use the HDHomeRunner for that. Then I've got an "IR Blaster" hooked up to the cable box, and I can record/watch those channels in SD. I put all that together with less then $600 (not including the TV).
Note that FCC regulations prohibit encryption on the re-broadcasted local channels, so you'll always have clearQAM on those stations
Yep. That's exactly right. They're expensive, too, so in addition to the overpriced vendor-built and CableLab certified PC, you'll be paying an additional ~ $250 for the cable-card capable tuner. Don't forget you'll need 2 of them if you want to record one show while you watch another.
Which is why my home-built DVR only records HD from the local broadcast channels. SD still works out of the cable box, though.
Yea, you're right. We should just trust them. I'm sure it's all nothing more than what they say it is. The government, after all, has never done anything nefarious, or outside of its stated intent.
But complaining that they're not deleting your emails? WTF?
I don't think you get it. The fishy@whitehouse.gov is for reporting on people opposed to the White House agenda.
So, yea, okay, they are required by law to keep those emails. But they are also prohibited by law from collecting lists of people opposed to their policies or party (it was put in place after it was revealed that Nixon was doing just that).
Since that email address is explicitly for the purpose of reporting about enemies and opposition activities, how do you reconcile the two?
My guess is they'll just ignore the law that doesn't suit their purposes.
I would hate to see a secretive US Government then...
Not to take sides, but how about one that "loses" millions of emails? That's when stuff gets really scary-- when they stop redacting records before releasing them and start destroying them outright.
Well no doubt they're making sure all those emails to fishy@whitehouse.gov are backed up and kept in a safe place.
With lots of copies.
Several that are littered around the IRS audit offices.
Toshiba does this on some of their laptops, too, including mine, as I discovered recently. It's there as a bios option, but no way to change it from "disabled".
I hope Toshiba decides to provide an update to re-enable the VT, but so far they haven't made a statement about it at all, AFAIK.
Or... the Feds will put them in irons and abuse us directly
And they probably will. I was 100% advocating for network neutrality legislation a few months ago, but seeing the stuff they are passing (or trying to) these days, I don't trust the criminals in Washington to pass anything that doesn't screw us all.
Note the liberal use of qualifiers all over the bill:
...to protect the right of consumers to access lawful content, run lawful applications, and use lawful services of their choice on the Internet;
enable consumers to connect to such networks their choice of lawful devices, as long as such devices do not harm the network;
"Lawful" all over the place, loopholes big enough to drive a truck through. No gambling (they've recently outlawed it), no copyright infringement, none of those pesky applications that allow you to infringe, etc. Oh - and we will of course be subject to whatever measures are needed to keep all that evil "unlawful" activity off our "free and open" Internet.
...to ensure that consumers receive meaningful information regarding their communications services;
So you evil ISPs better be logging everything so you can provide that for your us!! err.. I mean, your customers.:/
define the term âprivate transmission capacity servicesâ(TM);
â(5) clarify whether private transmission capacity services may not be subject to the duties described in subsections (b)(5) and (b)(6);
â(6) ensure that private transmission capacity services do not undermine the purposes of this Act and do not diminish or degrade the level of Internet access service offered to the public by the same provider
No doubt the ISPs will jump on this section as justification for selling VPN as a separate service, with separate and additional fees, and they have to block VPN for "basic" service due to federal regulation.
ââ(4) REASONABLE NETWORK MANAGEMENT.â" The term âreasonable network managementâ(TM) shall be defined by the Commission through regulations.â(TM)â(TM).
Oh, crap. That's not too broad, is it?
Better watch this one closely for amendments, folks. They're not grabbing nearly all the power they could with it...
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Why is different just because somebody else (another team) is doing the power-grabbing and warmongering and denigrating the opposition?
One candidate was singing about bombing Iran, one was saying diplomacy should be brought back, you call them both warmongers?
Yes: Obama is still saber-rattling over Iran. You claim one was "singing about bombing Iran", but I challenge you to actually find either that actually said anything like that. If anything, the rhetoric has stepped up, now claiming "substantiated intelligence" that they have another secret uranium enrichment facility. He's shifted troops from one middle eastern theatre to another, but they're all still there, with no end in sight.
You've got blinders on. Obama was the lesser of two evils: he's not undoing the increments-to-fascism that Bush enacted, but he's not pushing for more.
Actually, he is. Don't you think taking over car companies, greater authority for the Fed, and $3 billion worth of Byrne Grant funding is more increments toward fascism?
Wake up to that already.
I'm well aware of what's going on, because I know both teams are doing all the same stuff. How about you?
There are, however, plenty of Americans of every race that have been awakened to the goings-on in the US government and joining in opposing them [...] But, go ahead and dismiss all this as racist tea-bagging. Now that it's not W running the show, I guess is okay that the wars (and funding for them) are continuing, that the illegal wiretapping is being even more vociferously defended, that federal agents can write their own warrants and continue to do so, and the widening income gap will continue to widen as the rich are bailed out and the middle class is left to pick up the tab.
All of a sudden, they're awakened to those issues! Funny how all those same goings ons were fine by them when there wasn't a black man in the white house.
It is a dam shame that the new boss is the same as the old boss, but it's a really HUGE coincidence that the same policies suddenly frighten some that didn't mind them before, and that the new boss is different in one very visible way. Huge coincidence.
I hear this all the time. Come up with a new one, why don't you?
Frankly, I think the awakening occurred well before the election, at least for a whole lot of people. And there are probably some that are really still pretty clueless, and are cheering on the Tea Parties because they think it will get their team back in power. Whatever - that's a minority.
But let me ask you this. I take it you were railing against everything that Bush did for the last 8 years, and marching in war protests and calling your congressman, etc. What's different now? Why is different just because somebody else (another team) is doing the power-grabbing and warmongering and denigrating the opposition? Is it okay now that the treasury is being raided by corporations and special interests are writing bills now that it's different corporations and special interests than it was before?
my issue with the teabaggers ... They had a fair shot at putting their man in power, they lost fair and square.
I think part of the problem is that for most of the dammit - "teabaggers" WTF? Tell you what, instead of "liberal" or "progressive", how about everybody just starts calling you "buttlickers" Tea Party protesters actually didn't have a fair shot at putting "their man" in power. Instead, the Republicans threw up somebody that represented them about as well as John Kerry represented the buttlickers. The Tea Partiers that I have talked with were almost as upset with W as they are now with Obama. And McCain wasn't the change they wanted, either. He was just more centrism that the Republican establishment thought they could win an election with.
The bad part about the Tea Parties is that the Republicans are trying to co-opt the movement. This is how the corrupt politicians keep maintaining power - they pit Team R against Team D, each thinking that if just their team gets in, things will get better, but then they just get worse. If the Tea Parties buy into the Republicans promises now and put them back in power, it will just be more of the same.
Wake up, people!
Please provide some sort of evidence to back up your wild assertion, a photo of a minority at a teabag party or town-hall rally clearly holding a birther/deather poster would do the trick.
I don't know about the "birther" thing. I think these fringe people are being focused on because it's easy to try to claim they represent a much larger portion of people than they really do, and the entire issue creates a distraction from other real issues that people should be talking about.
There is no such thing as a "teabag party" that I've heard of, although I have heard many of the big-government statists attempting to dismiss and denigrate any opposition to the current and proposed Washington policies by either using sexual innuendo ("tea-bagging") or simply implying (oops - more than just implying it now) they are in opposition because of the President's race. That being the case, it's impossible to provide the evidence you are looking for.
There are, however, plenty of Americans of every race that have been awakened to the goings-on in the US government and joining in opposing them (there are a few examples here ), but of course many blacks are content that there is a nice, friendly black face in the White House that says all the right things, and don't try to look behind the scenes at what is going and and the people that really stand to gain from the massive debt and spending.
But, of course, dismissing any opposition as racist and extremist is convenient since it absolves you of any responsibility for addressing the real issues. One would think that a country $12 trillion in debt, with trillions more in current unfunded liabilities, and a planned annual deficit of another $1 trillion a year over the next 10 years, would be looking at ways to get their financial house in order, rather than looking at new ways of spending money and creating more liabilities that they have no plan for funding.
But, go ahead and dismiss all this as racist tea-bagging. Now that it's not W running the show, I guess is okay that the wars (and funding for them) are continuing, that the illegal wiretapping is being even more vociferously defended, that federal agents can write their own warrants and continue to do so, and the widening income gap will continue to widen as the rich are bailed out and the middle class is left to pick up the tab.
The US is too busy destroying the middle class in their own country to worry about supporting the growth of it in another. All this warmongering is just an excuse to start up more intervention in the Middle East. What's surprising is even /. is joining in with the MSM to try to whip up support for more military action. The irony being that all this is occurring under a president that won a significant number of votes by appealing to people that wanted a less interventionist government.
Could an American please explain to me why the majority of USA seems to oppose public healthcare?
According to economist Paul Krugman in The Conscience of a Liberal, the most likely answer to this question is "because it will help black people". He argues that this was the biggest reason Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson couldn't get health care plans through. And part of the reason why Bill Clinton couldn't, and probably bigger part of the reason Barack Obama's having a tough time.
So, it's racism? That's your answer? Because of racism? Really?
Look, we elected a black President. He's there right now running the office. Can we stop playing the race card now? Shouldn't we talk about real issues and stop accusing the opposition of racism? Or is it just too easy a ploy to give up?
Olbermann he is ONE OF THE VERY FEW that attacks BOTH sides. (can you produce 3 videolinks of FOX news or glen beck criticizing bush ?)
Well, I'm no fan of Beck, but, well... yea:
Yea, so what?
Not really. The federal and state regulations make it difficult to get health insurance for yourself as good and affordable as employers can get it. Large employers even take advantage of those regulations to provide "self-insurance" for their employees, so insurance companies don't get involved in claims decisions - the employer pays the bills.
Yes, you can contract with any other private party for anything. That's the entire basis of common law. And of course everyone wants those contracts to benefit themselves more than the other party. Caveat Emptor.
So with those regulations in place, most folks shop insurance as part of the package when looking for a job. And that's typically the only decision on health care payment / insurance that most folks ever get to make. That really distorts things, as a lot of costs are hidden, controlled, or inflated in one area to take advantage of some tax benefit or other.
Providing less choice in these areas, and basically making a lot of existing plans illegal (or "grandfathered") is not going to improve the situation. There are many ways of addressing the problems that people have, and a public option seems like a reasonable direction, but not when lots of other options are being outlawed at the same time.
Things that aren't even being considered include moving away from employer-based health insurance, implementation of reasonable tort reform, ending in-state restrictions on out-of-state health plans, and ending the ability of providers to drop or raise rates on the insured when they are diagnosed with an expensive condition.
The $18 million contract was for recovery.gov, not usaspending.gov.
Oh, that's right! I get them confused (wonder why).
usaspending.gov is the site run by our old buddy Vivek Kundra. You know, the guy with the impressive resume that, it turns out, includes impressive CIO positions at companies where he was the only employee. Impressive.
In my experience, this is usually the result of a low-bid IT contractor getting a last-minute request to slap something together.
$18 million for a website is "low-bid"??
Yes. These problems are entirely caused by 8 years of failed policies. You can't really expect to see the positive changes from reversing those failed policies of the Bush administration until at least... January of 2012.
..besides, those were only ordinary whippets. What we're talking about here is in a whole new class, Whippets of Doom!
"Whippets of Doom!" Woohoo that's rich! I gotta use that. Next time somebody asks for a huff of my balloon, I'll just be like "Oh, man, you don't want any of this. These are Whippets of Doom!".
No more hippy crack?
Whatever happened to hooking up your standard Digital cable box to your computer via composite (or even coax) and using an IR Blaster or serial cable to set the channel on the box? Not the perfect solution, but would suffice for most people.
Well, sure, that still works, and probably always will. In fact, I do that in my own setup, although it's more of a hybrid (check out my other post about this) in that I get some channels in HD, but most are in SD out of the cable box's SVideo port.
I think the issue is that most people would prefer HD when it's available, and there are a lot of channels being broadcast in HD these days.
I thought you only needed one m-card (which is apparently the follow on to the cable card but does multiple streams)? I'm new to this, but I thought I could take the m-card out of one of my comcast cable boxes once it was authorized and put it into another device like a TiVo?
Yes, the m-card will handle multiple signals, and there are some TiVO boxes that will accept it. But there are no PC-based solutions that work with it yet. The ATI tuners can use them, but you still need 2 tuners. Supposedly, there will be some multi-tuner cards coming soon.
If you want to look into what's possible, the The Green Button forums has a lot of information, at least about using Windows Media Center. But if you plan to bring HD content into your PC, it's the only option, unless you only want over-the-air channels.
For me, the hybrid was the best choice. I get about 13 channels of HD from the local stations. I use the HDHomeRunner for that. Then I've got an "IR Blaster" hooked up to the cable box, and I can record/watch those channels in SD. I put all that together with less then $600 (not including the TV).
Note that FCC regulations prohibit encryption on the re-broadcasted local channels, so you'll always have clearQAM on those stations
Yep. That's exactly right. They're expensive, too, so in addition to the overpriced vendor-built and CableLab certified PC, you'll be paying an additional ~ $250 for the cable-card capable tuner. Don't forget you'll need 2 of them if you want to record one show while you watch another.
Which is why my home-built DVR only records HD from the local broadcast channels. SD still works out of the cable box, though.
Crap. I need to stop putting it off and just go ahead and order this thing.
Oops - that should have been $4,066,000.
Damn those floating decimals!
And it's working! SCOXQ is up from .09 to .26 !
Looks like Wall Street thinks Unix is worth about ... $400,000.
Yea, you're right. We should just trust them. I'm sure it's all nothing more than what they say it is. The government, after all, has never done anything nefarious, or outside of its stated intent.
But complaining that they're not deleting your emails? WTF?
I don't think you get it. The fishy@whitehouse.gov is for reporting on people opposed to the White House agenda.
So, yea, okay, they are required by law to keep those emails. But they are also prohibited by law from collecting lists of people opposed to their policies or party (it was put in place after it was revealed that Nixon was doing just that).
Since that email address is explicitly for the purpose of reporting about enemies and opposition activities, how do you reconcile the two?
My guess is they'll just ignore the law that doesn't suit their purposes.
I would hate to see a secretive US Government then...
Not to take sides, but how about one that "loses" millions of emails? That's when stuff gets really scary-- when they stop redacting records before releasing them and start destroying them outright.
Well no doubt they're making sure all those emails to fishy@whitehouse.gov are backed up and kept in a safe place.
With lots of copies.
Several that are littered around the IRS audit offices.
Toshiba does this on some of their laptops, too, including mine, as I discovered recently. It's there as a bios option, but no way to change it from "disabled".
I hope Toshiba decides to provide an update to re-enable the VT, but so far they haven't made a statement about it at all, AFAIK.
Or... the Feds will put them in irons and abuse us directly
And they probably will. I was 100% advocating for network neutrality legislation a few months ago, but seeing the stuff they are passing (or trying to) these days, I don't trust the criminals in Washington to pass anything that doesn't screw us all.
Note the liberal use of qualifiers all over the bill:
"Lawful" all over the place, loopholes big enough to drive a truck through. No gambling (they've recently outlawed it), no copyright infringement, none of those pesky applications that allow you to infringe, etc. Oh - and we will of course be subject to whatever measures are needed to keep all that evil "unlawful" activity off our "free and open" Internet.
So you evil ISPs better be logging everything so you can provide that for your us!! err.. I mean, your customers. :/
No doubt the ISPs will jump on this section as justification for selling VPN as a separate service, with separate and additional fees, and they have to block VPN for "basic" service due to federal regulation.
Oh, crap. That's not too broad, is it?
Better watch this one closely for amendments, folks. They're not grabbing nearly all the power they could with it...
sp. TANSTAAFL